


Silent Sentient

by trashsshi



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bullying, Found Family, M/M, Magical Boys, Magical Tattoos, Multi, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:14:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22436233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashsshi/pseuds/trashsshi
Summary: Taeyong is nearly of age, and he is also the different one, the one the other orphans pick on and secretly fear. He doesn't know why the charismatic, mysterious Jongin would want to adopt him of all people. But then he finds out that Jongin collects magical boys for a purpose of his own- a purpose that is as mysterious and unfathomable as everything else about him.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Lee Taeyong/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Lee Taeyong/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. The Tug

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be more focused on the fantasy plot, and the romance will only develop later in the story. i can't promise anything about the ending, either. but i hope you'll stick with me for the ride.
> 
> i've chosen no archive warnings for now, but if and when i write content that requires warnings in the coming chapters, i will update the tags and archive warnings accordingly.

Taeyong is twelve years old when he first feels the tug.

Definitely abnormal, so he can’t tell anyone. Inexplicable, so he can’t explain himself to anyone. But it doesn’t feel  _ wrong.  _ Because it is so intensely physical. Later when he falls in love, he experiences it almost like an extension of the tug. Helpless, unable to feed it, unable to starve it to death, unable to bear it. Helpless, he endures it. The only conceivable thing to do.

It hauls him out of sleep, and he gasps, breaking the surface from underwater. In the dark, in his disorientation, his breathing unjustifiably effortful and sharp, the city clock tolls midnight with an ominous and mournful sound. As though in the wake of a nightmare that he forgot the moment he opened his eyes.

Donghyuck turns over beside him. Taeyong shifts his head so that his cheek rests on the pillow and they are almost nose to nose. In the dark, Donghyuck’s eyes are overwhelmingly whites. “This only happens once in everyone’s life.”

“What?” Taeyong croaks.

“The bell announcing the number of years instead of the number of hours. The number of years you’ve lived, at precisely the right time. At the same time as those years are being added to your account.” He pauses. “Of course, only for those who live until they’re twelve.”

Taeyong’s sleep-swaddled mind can only half-comprehend, half wonder at the other boy mulling such things at the birth hour of morning. “Haven’t you been able to sleep?”

Donghyuck’s chest rises and deflates in a sigh. Shrugging with his ribs instead of his shoulders.

Taeyong shifts again, staring in the direction of the ceiling. “Happy Birthday to me.”

Donghyuck says, “Happy special once-in-your-life birthday.” He hunches over on his other side. Taeyong blinks at his back with heavy eyelids, the tug hindering him from slipping back into sleep.

༄

They gather out on the lawn, barefoot, soaking up the dew. Taeyong scrunches the grass between his toes as Suah calls everyone closer together. “All right,” she nods at him. The candles on the cake look gratuitous in the watery daylight. He heaves in a breath and blows them out, to a smattering of applause and song. And to a wish.

He wishes for an answer to the tug that racked him all night, and an answer to the mark on his chest that alienates him from the rest. The latter wish is the same one he murmurs every year.

His lips stop moving, and he raises his eyes to Suah’s. She is watching him intently. The others traipse around the yard, waiting for the cake to be sliced up and handed around. Except for Kangin, who still stands at the table, gaze inscrutable as it always is when he meets Taeyong’s eyes. As though he wants to make him uncomfortable. Always. Even when he can’t do any more than just  _ look _ at him.

Taeyong looks away, takes up the plastic knife and cuts into the cake. He wants to hack at it, send the frosting flying around, the butterscotch bits scattering; ruin the layers of sponge and crumble the base. But he cuts gently, sending angry force to the grip of his knuckles instead. They pale, popping.

Suah carefully picks up the first slice and brings it to his mouth. “Happy Birthday, Taeyong,” she smiles, and he tries to smile back with his bulging cheeks.

༄

“Suah, there’s something wrong with me.” His lips stretch tremulously, like a split seam.

She lifts her hands and shakes her head, her eyes drooping gently, ever ready to soothe. Before she can speak he says, “Please. I need- you need to see what’s happening.”

The mirror in the bathroom makes him afraid. A wave of weakness washes over him. He tries to stay upright, gripping Suah’s wrist, and she holds him for a while. Then he shows her.

A silver spiral on his sternum. He has had it for as long as he can remember. He could never get rid of it. He could never get used to it. Like a birthmark, a part of his skin. A part of him.

But it isn't static like a tattoo anymore. It’s behaving differently, and he can't understand it. His arms quiver as he holds his shirt up. A glisten travels to and fro along the spiral, from the outer end to the inner and back again. It looks fatly liquid, like mercury. But when he touches it he can’t feel anything other than his skin.

Suah shirks away, frightened. He watches her watch the glisten spiral in and out, her hand hovering near her dismayed mouth. She catches him watching her. Wide-eyed, with incomprehension, fear and pity in her glance, but also something accusatory.

She stiffens her shoulders and brings herself to speak, enunciating the words slowly and tightly, plucking them out like weeds. “It’s okay. It’s going to be fine.”

This isn’t what he needs. This isn't why showed her, it doesn't help him at all. “But-“

“It isn’t hurting you, is it?” She interrupts him, her voice snappy.

“N-no…” He had been in two minds about whether or not to tell her about the tug, as well. Now, of course, he decides against it.

“So, don’t worry about it.”

_ Easy for you to say,  _ he thinks bitterly. She is supposed to be his guardian, his caretaker, but at that lonely moment she is nothing to him at all. 

༄

The crow caws.

Large enough to be mistaken for a raven, it hops forward with force on the branch, sending the vestiges of last night’s rain showering down. It puff-ruffles its slate sheen feathers, and Taeyong wonders whether it will finally take flight. Wonders idly, not seriously, because he knows it likely never will.

“Customer coming,” says Donghyuck unnecessarily.

“Yeah, that’s the only reason it ever caws,” says Taeyong.

“Yes.” Donghyuck files through the cabinet of records, peacefully methodical, oblivious to Taeyong’s impatience.

“A  _ visitor  _ is coming,” says Chanyeol, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands clasped behind his back. “Of course, it’s  _ most probably _ a customer.”

“Yes,” says Donghyuck, and they beam at each other. Taeyong rolls his eyes, going back to drawing columns and margins in the latest record. Line after line after line. Maybe next year, or in a few months if he does his job well, he’ll move up to the counting room. Someone else will draw columns in the record for him, and he’ll be the one to fill them in with numbers and add them up.

Line after line after line after line. It used to calm him down, drawing carefully, methodically, mechanically. But today, it’s frustrating. Because of the tug. He feels gutted. As though there is somewhere else he has to be, something else he has to do. And he keeps imagining what must be going on beneath his shirt. Moving mercury. It makes his skin crawl.

Donghyuck comments at every caw, grating on him. The customers aren’t distracting, but just as grating, all of a herd. The clang of the city clock stretches the intervals. Time is tensile. Instead of trickling down the hourglass, an ant carries it over, grain by grain.

Chanyeol calls him aside at the end of his shift. “Weren’t you a little… out of it today?”

Taeyong licks his lips and says, “Sorry.”

The proprietor smiles hugely. “No worries. Maybe this’ll help you concentrate.” Out of nowhere (well, to be precise, he’d apparently been holding it behind his back) he brings out a headpiece, a beautiful thing. Metallic fragility and elegance sweep back either side from the parting in Taeyong’s hair, with a droplet of crystal shivering at the center of his forehead.

“Happy Birthday.”

The mirror standing on the counter shows him a boy who is crowned. He looks like somebody. Like he has the potential to be somebody. To have special dreams and special abilities.

This isn’t going to help him concentrate. This is an irresistible invitation to daydream, to play pretend. Chanyeol’s jokes are, as usual, so bad they can’t be jokes at all.

“Thank you.” He says breathlessly.

༄

He’s seen them in photographs. Loose hair crowned by a circlet or wreath, long gown, trailing fingers through a field, under a mellow sun. Today he feels like one of them. He stands in the yard with the soul of a long-lost princess, with a romantic tragedy behind him and a romantic destiny before him. He twirls around, because he is alone and because such long skirts were flared just for twirling, in his opinion.

He spins, sees the house, twirls the rest of the arc, sees the horizon, spins back, sees the house and-

Kangin in front of him.

He isn't alone anymore, so he stops.

Suddenly, he notices the others as well. Standing and watching as Kangin takes slow strides towards him, menacingly purposeful. Kangin tears the headpiece off, and Taeyong feels his scalp sting at the hair roots, as though it had been connected to the nerves in his head. As though a part of him was wrenched out.

Kangin drops it, grinding it into the ground. Taeyong can’t look, but he can’t look away. So he watches Kangin’s shoe instead of watching his crowning glory disappear into the soft earth.

Inevitably, his dress is pulled off and crumpled into the earth, as well. They poke his ribs and jeer. They’re not going to subject him to violence as they did the dress and headpiece, because they know humiliation is enough.

They get bored after a while, and every muscle of him clenches, for they might try to come up with worse, but they clear off disdainfully and he pulls the dress back on. He scrabbles the earth where Kangin left a shoeprint-shaped groove and finds his headpiece, black dirt blemishing it like tarnished silver.

He has always had the tattoo. But they’ll never get used to it. 

༄

‘You took  _ ages.’ _

He’s surprised by the whine in Donghyuck’s voice. The latter already bathed before Taeyong, so he doesn’t see why it should matter if he takes up the bathroom for a while. ‘I wanted to soak,’ he says, which is partly true. It took a while to get rid of the dirt that got under his nails, but he also wanted to relax. Have the heat seep away the crawling on his skin from their prodding fingers. Feel pure, new and whole.

‘Well,’ Donghyuck says complainingly, ‘I can’t sleep.’

He spent half the night awake yesterday as well.

‘I can’t stop thinking.’

‘Okay, well, what can I do about that?’ Taeyong says, defensive, almost rude.

Donghyuck regards him owlishly for a long moment, and he feels his heart thrum in his ribs. There’s no way he could know… right?

‘You like cuddling.’

‘…Yeah…’ Taeyong rubs the back of his head, confused. He can be pretty clingy, especially as Donghyuck is the only one in this place who’s actually a friend, so that all his affection is concentrated on him. Donghyuck is usually not keen on skinship, though.

Donghyuck holds out his arms. ‘Let’s cuddle and sleep,’ he says seriously.

Taeyong’s jaw goes slack for a moment, then he’s yelping and flinging himself on the bed. Donghyuck lies down, arranging the blanket over himself, but Taeyong ruins it, slinging one leg over.

Donghyuck wriggles, pushing Taeyong’s leg lower, diagonally over his knees. Taeyong nuzzles into his shoulder, and Donghyuck turns to him, breathing into his hair.

His breathing is even, but after a while, still not as deep as when he’s asleep. Taeyong shifts slightly, thinks he’ll risk it. He shuts his eyes, not with the laxness and abandon of calling upon sleep, but with a  _ purpose _ he calls up from that spot in his skull where he feels his head voice when he sings, from the tips of his fingers and toes, from the churning warmth at his core, a burn up his sternum right where his tattoo begins (or perhaps where it ends).

He feels physically disembodied, even though he knows he isn’t, not quite. All he has to do is look back, and he’ll be within the ordinary confines of his body again. However, this place- what he calls in his own mind his ‘dreamscape’- seems rather metaphysical. Gothic spires rise around him as he runs up an endless maze of open, crisscrossing staircases, single-mindedly focusing on where he wants to be.

Soon enough, the staircase below him disappears mid-step, empty space ripping, yawning open to something darker. He finds himself falling into the abyss, down the rabbit hole from one metaphysical realm to the other.

Donghyuck’s dreamscape consists of endless crop fields, rippling and rustling as though the plants are leaning into each other to whisper. Taeyong has been here before, and he knows it’s risky, because Donghyuck can  _ see him _ in his dream, will be dreaming of Taeyong right this moment. He wouldn’t be here, though, if he hadn’t put Donghyuck to sleep first so that he could enter his dreamscape. The only reason he’s entering is because he thinks Donghyuck might have his suspicions… hopefully, he can make Donghyuck correlate the alleviation of his insomnia with the appearance of Taeyong in his dreams. Then Taeyong can begin bringing him sleep without entering his dreamscape, until Donghyuck decides he was mistaken, that Taeyong has no correlation with his sleep at all.

His concerting of sleep, his penetration of dreams… they are his weapons. He isn’t about to wave them in Donghyuck’s face.

He looks back over his shoulder. Tunnel vision. He can’t make anything out; vivid, confusing shapes flash in the dense darkness. The sights and sounds intensify into a whirlwind, he is sucked in and spat out.

Into normalcy.

Except he isn’t normal. He watches Donghyuck sleep, the tiniest flutters of his eyelids and the muscles working under them. Then, Taeyong gets off side of the bed, walking barefoot out into the hallway. He isn’t normal, and for the first time he’s going to embrace it.

He goes past door after door, ghosting through the house like a sleepwalker. The warmth in his sternum is a steady thrum as he casts sleep over everyone he passes. He feels jittery, alive, everyone else dead to the world; he is the powerful one.

He stops at one of the doors. Turns the knob, enters.

Barefoot, silent steps up to Kangin’s bed. Taeyong looms over him. In sleep Kangin’s expression is strangely innocent, almost vulnerable.

But Taeyong doesn’t feel the slightest twinge as he attacks.

Kangin’s dreamscape is all gnarled trees with thick roots cracking through concrete. Taeyong takes it all in. Then he summons the shadows.

Perhaps this is his realm. Perhaps he isn’t meant for the real world at all. Dreamscapes and all their entities lend themselves to him, obey his every whim like putty in his hands, even his most malevolent.

Taeyong eventually withdraws and watches dispassionately as Kangin thrashes in his sleep, still in the throes of the horror of the nightmare Taeyong orchestrated. Watches until he wakes, jerking up in his bed, sweating and shivering. His eyes are painfully wide as he regards Taeyong with abject fright, as though he has walked right out of his worst nightmares (which he has). Taeyong leans forward, enjoying the way he shrinks back from him, and whispers, ‘Leave me alone. Or next time, you won’t have the mercy of waking up.’

  
  



	2. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taeyong meets Jongin.

Taeyong is seventeen when he stops secretly dreaming of adoption.

Four years, and he’ll be twenty-one, and he can be emancipated. Four more, and he’ll be twenty-five, officially of age. He’ll check out of the orphan house, get the hell out of this town (although the thought of leaving Chanyeol’s shop sort of saddens him); he’ll start anew, he’ll actually  _ go somewhere. _

So he tells Donghyuck for the umpteenth time, stumping his cigarette on the pigeon-shit-spattered wood of the fence, because Donghyuck doesn’t mind repetition. As always, he adds that he wants Donghyuck to come with him.

Donghyuck shrugs with a slight pout. He likes his life here. He  _ likes _ that he isn’t going anywhere, is comfortable in routine, in predictability. In a calendar of unchanging days. Taeyong bites his lip and tries to act like he doesn’t care.

He lights another cigarette.

The gate creaks, and he turns to see a bunch of the girls walking out. They’re probably heading to a karaoke to blow the money from their part-time jobs, as they do every weekend. Taeyong has his elbows up on the fence, and he’d scoff if not for the cigarette dangling from his lips. So, he watches them with withering scorn instead. They glare as they pass by, but one of them steps aside and approaches him.

‘Can I have a drag?’ she says.

‘ _ Miyeon _ ,’ whines one of her friends impatiently.

Taeyong grins, shrugging his arms off the fence and ambling over. He takes a slow drag of the cigarette, removing it between thumb and forefinger. He cups her face with his other hand and connects their lips, exhaling the smoke into her mouth.

He draws back, enjoying the look in her startled eyes.

‘That’s all your getting, babe, sorry.’

It takes a moment for her to get her bearings, and for her posse to wrap their heads around what happened and shriek.

‘You-‘

‘What the  _ fuck _ -‘

‘Did he just-‘

‘You fucking  _ creep _ !’

He catches her arm as she swings it back. ‘Save the energy.’ He places the cigarette back between his lips. ‘You’re going to be screeching in the noraebang all evening.’

‘That was stupid,’ says Donghyuck, disapproving, when Taeyong hoists himself up to sit on the fence, legs swinging. There are some perks to being petite, after all.

‘She was basically asking for an indirect kiss, all right,’ said Taeyong, insouciant. ‘And I basically said she doesn’t have to be coy with me.’

‘Why am I friends with you?’

‘Because. My cuddling skills are unrivalled.’ Taeyong winks. ‘I can even get you to sleep.’

༄

Crow has moved from the tree, and is now perched on the board, softly askew, with ‘Park’s Imitation-Jewelry and Accessories’ carved across it in narrow letters. Taeyong stops at the store front, feeling mild astonishment as Crow hops from the board onto the awning.

‘Chanyeol!’ he yells, entering the store with a jingle. ‘Crow flew, huh? Like actually finally fucking  _ flew _ !’

‘Neither of us saw it, though,’ says Chanyeol sadly. ‘And it hasn’t moved since then.’

‘We’re going to continue using ladders to feed it,’ says Doyoung, the kid who’s drawing the margins now that Taeyong is doing the counting-up.

‘Well, just scatter some feed on the ground next time just in case, see what happens.’ Taeyong goes to the back room and sits on the desk, swinging his legs and sizing up the records of the day’s sales so far. Donghyuck is there as well, attaching charms to bracelets and piling them in the corner of the desk.

Taeyong moves from the desk to the chair and loses himself in calculations, the clink of Donghyuck’s work pleasant background noise. The hours go by in a steady trickle, night gaining on noon. It’s six thirty, there’s still two hours to go before their shift ends, but Chanyeol pokes his head in to tell him that Suah requested for him- only him, and not Donghyuck- to finish early.

‘Why?’ says Taeyong, stretching in his chair almost to the point of contortion.

‘She didn’t say.’

‘You’ve interrupted my Zen,’ huffs Taeyong, but Chanyeol has already retracted his head, waving his hand in dismissal.

༄

‘Taeyong!’ Suah smiles widely, enthusiastically, freaking him out. ‘Have a seat.’

He takes a stool gingerly, already suspicious. ‘What’s up?’

‘Tea?’ She holds up her cup.

He shrugs. She pours out a cup, that disquieting cheerfulness of hers unwavering. He takes it and watches the soft wisps of steam rather than look at her.

‘It’s not,’ he casts around for pretentious phrasing, ‘ _ seemly _ of me to leave the shop early. Chanyeol’s very lenient with me as it is.’  _ You better have a good excuse for calling me back and you better fucking get to it already, _ he doesn’t say.

Suah blows, sips, sets the cup gently down. She’s doing it on purpose, he thinks with a flash of irritation.

‘There’s someone who wants to adopt you,’ she says, and leans back as if to enjoy his reaction.

༄

A knock on the door. ‘He’s here!’ says Suah, then raps on the desk in front of Taeyong when he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t look up.

Suah huffs. ‘You don’t know how to be grateful. Behave yourself in front of him, okay?’ Her face morphs from annoyed to vacuously, forcedly bright. ‘Come in!’ she calls, practically in sing-song.

Taeyong doesn’t look up from his hands, clasped in his lap, even as the man takes the seat next to him. But he’s hyper-aware, from the corner of his eyes. The man is around an inch taller than him, perhaps. The tan of his skin is uncommon to see in this sun-forsaken land; he must be from a land far, far away; it might even be Donghyuck’s ancestral land.  _ Take me away. Far, far away, _ thinks Taeyong desperately, before just as desperately burying the thought. It won’t happen. And also he shouldn’t want it to happen; it would mean leaving Donghyuck.

Suah is saying something, gesturing to Taeyong, and he can vaguely sense her effort to urgently communicate to him to lift his gaze and make himself personable for their guest, but he can’t spare her any attention. The man’s very presence is overwhelming in the way it commands his senses. Even his tug, which exploded in painful intensity a few moments before when the man entered the room, subsided suddenly and sharply when he sat next to Taeyong, into a minor twinge he could almost ignore. That’s something Taeyong has never experienced in all the years he has borne the tug.

Even the whisper of the fabric of the man’s shirt as he shifts in the chair to turn to face Taeyong is different from any he’s heard, like the mating call of an alien insect. When the man extends his hand towards Taeyong, his sleeve sibilating as though it abrades against the very air, Taeyong doesn’t recognize the fabric, its texture and sheen like the skin of an unknown animal.

It scares, fascinates and excites Taeyong all at once. Perhaps it would arouse him if he didn’t know this man was considering being a parent to him. Taeyong takes his hand, noting the contrast of their skins, then slowly raises his head.

“Nice to meet you, Taeyong,” says the stranger, smiling with an easy warmth that makes Taeyong’s stomach drop. He squeezes Taeyong’s hand. “I’m Jongin.” The way he speaks, he could be from anywhere. His enunciation is neutral, unplaceable. 

“Mr. Kim Jongin. He’s a merchant,” interjects Suah. Taeyong doesn’t acknowledge her, drinking in Jongin’s face. He’s handsome, his eyes dark and slightly luminous, limpid yet clear at the same time. Taeyong feels like Jongin can see right through him while also not really seeing him at all.

Jongin leaves Taeyong’s hand gently. Taeyong closes his hand around air, closes it into a fist and drops it to his lap.

Jongin runs his hand through his hair, breaking eye contact for the first time. “You can just call me Jongin, though.”

“It sounds like you look,” blurts Taeyong.  _ Jongin.  _ It sounds like a warm, honeyed hum.

Jongin laughs.

Suah raps on the desk. Taeyong turns to her reluctantly.

“Mr. Kim is going to be meeting you a few times to talk to you, get to know you before taking the big step. There are formalities to go through; it could take a while.” Suah smiles, taut and stretched wide. “But after all the paperwork and trivialities, you become family! Isn’t that exciting?”

“It’s on the table,” says Jongin. “It’s just as well that the formalities take time; we shouldn’t rush into this. It’s not just that I want to be sure about this. I want you to want this too.” Taeyong tries not to squirm at the wording- as though they’re contemplating a different sort of relationship altogether. Like marriage. It isn’t that the phrasing is suggestive though; rather that people usually do this kind of thing- discussions about becoming a family, paperwork, registering as family- for marriage. Adoption is a rare event. 

༄

Suah sees Jongin to the door. Jongin turns as he’s leaving and Taeyong stands, half out of his seat, but then he meets Jongin’s eyes and freezes. He can’t do it. It feels like a farewell for good. Jongin’s moonless eyes hold no promise, filmed over with a shine that is scintillating rather than sympathetic. His warmth is palpable, but Taeyong can’t trace its source. 

Jongin stretches his hand out, palm facing up.

Taeyong is jerked into motion, stumbling to him and accepting his hand. Jongin shakes it.  _ One last time,  _ Taeyong’s brain supplies nastily.

“I’ll see you soon,” says Jongin, smiling.

It’s like being doused in sunshine. His insides flip. And he flips too, from despair to flaring, blooming hope. Taeyong smiles at him for the first time. 

༄

That night, Taeyong is helplessly awake. He casts sleep so deep over Donghyuck that he doesn’t stir no matter how Taeyong tosses and turns. It’s not that Taeyong can’t stop thinking about the prospect of adoption- those thoughts aren’t the culprit. That’s merely what his mind automatically obsesses over in his wakened state. No, the culprit is the tug. It racks him like an illness.

He feels gutted. 

He’s sure it’s not  _ actually _ worse, it just feels worse because of the brief respite he’s had earlier in the evening. Be that as it may, he feels like he might actually die, not because of the tug itself but because of the experience of it. Cavernous, implacable, unflagging (except for that afternoon. He'd gladly live that afternoon over and over if only he could turn back time)- surely nobody can suffer this and survive. Even if it doesn’t kill them, surely anybody would want to die.

He’s fucking ravenous.

He’s starving.

He’s starving, sick to the bone. But he doesn’t wish he could just die. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he’s waiting for Jongin to take him away. Maybe he’s paying for wanting Jongin to take him away when it’d make more sense for Jongin to adopt Donghyuck, younger, cuter, better behaved and probably from the same part of the world. He can’t understand why Jongin would choose him.

He retreats into his dreamscape. He doesn’t feel the tug any less after disembodiment, and after all these years he supposes that the tug itself isn't physical even if the experience of it is intensely so. But at least he can focus his mind on something else. And he can kid himself while running up to the tops of those spires, running up endless, spiralling staircases, that he’s actually running  _ to _ something that can  _ fill _ him. A glut to gorge himself on  _ once _ until he is sated for life, never to feel the tug again.

༄

Taeyong knows it’s only a maybe. Jongin is going to meet him first, several times, and he can’t imagine him still wanting him after that. Even if he miraculously does, the process takes ages  _ and _ it’s expensive.

He’s sure it’s not going to happen.

But there’s a vicious, ferocious hope in his chest. It hurts. It won’t fucking go. And that’s why he’s so fucking nervous. Because he believes there’s no hope, but he doesn’t believe it  _ enough _ , doesn’t believe it to the hilt, so there’s room for hope, so there’s room for him to screw it up, but maybe if he just leaves before Jongin gets here and tells Suah fuck it he doesn’t need it, he’ll be emancipated soon anyway, a few years and he can leave anyway; he needs to fucking calm down so he closes his eyes and starts doing calculations in his head but he can’t concentrate, it’s not getting better-

‘Taeyong.’

His eyes snap open. Jongin is seated across from him. He’s wearing a red shirt over cream-coloured slacks- once more, made of textiles Taeyong has never seen and can’t name. He has one leg folded on top of the other. It suits him.

In the moment that their eyes meet, something bursts in Taeyong’s chest. The tug flares, a gaping maw, capable of swallowing him inside out- then dwindles just as suddenly. He sighs audibly from the relief. The tug is still there, but it’s a subdued pang, not a gnawing hollowness.

Taeyong opens his mouth, but suddenly speaking seems too complicated to figure out, so he lowers his head and tries not to fidget under Jongin’s gaze. He feels simultaneously scrutinized and overlooked. Jongin reaches over to grasp his hand over the table, as though to reassure him. When Taeyong straightens up, Jongin settles back with a smile equally reassuring, and waves a waiter over.

‘What’ll you have?’

‘Um… hemp milk,’ says Taeyong, because his mouth is dry. ‘Thanks.’

‘And I'll have the ginger-lemon sweet potato bake,’ says Jongin, nodding when the waiter repeats their order.

When the waiter leaves, Jongin smiles flutterbies at Taeyong. ‘How are you today?’

‘Nervous,’ says Taeyong truthfully. 

Jongin clamps his lips together, still smiling. ‘So am I, actually.’

‘Why?’ Taeyong is wide-eyed.

Jongin fiddles with his sleeve, rolling it up. ‘I told you when we first met. I want you to want this too.’

Taeyong is quiet, and Jongin seems comfortable with that, making music, with his fingers drumming the table and a honeyed hum under his breath. Taeyong watches him look around the eating house: at the proprietrix, who reminds Taeyong of Chanyeol in the way she carries herself in her own establishment and the way she runs things; at the waiter, taking a casserole dish to a customer; at a group of people drinking cherry mead in the corner. Taeyong can smell their tankards from all the way over here. He wishes he could taste it. He wishes he could drink it until he’s warmly content, until his throat feels as sweet as Jongin sounds. He wishes he were of age so he could chug it down and just  _ leave. _

‘What was it like, growing up?’ says Jongin eventually, fingers and eyes stilling, an interrupted song. Taeyong doesn’t know what  _ it _ means. What was it like growing up in the orphanhouse, or in this country, or as someone markedly different?- but Jongin doesn’t know he’s markedly different.

‘Like I can’t grow up fast enough.’ Most of his early birthday wishes were to do with aging year by year being too slow, tortuously slow: he’d screw up his eyes tight shut and wish very hard to be grown up when he opened them, even though he hadn’t blown out the candles yet, because he’d blown out the previous years’ candles to the same wish and surely it had to count; it was high time. When he’d finally open his eyes and blow out the candles, the smoke would dissipate leaving him still the same. Once he was old enough to realize being grown up wouldn’t protect him, not from the adults, not when he’d still be markedly different, his wishes changed. 

One thing didn’t change though, his wishes are still just as hopeless.

‘Having an adult to hold your hand,’ says Jongin as a waitress sets his dish in front of him, ‘would it do just as well? If you wanted the same things the adult wanted of you?’ Taeyong makes a face at the table, holding his glass to his lips longer to put off answering.

‘How is it?’ Jongin says, nodding to the drink as he puts it down.

“Good,” answers Taeyong. ‘Warm, but not too warm. Sweet, but not too sweet.’

Jongin takes a forkful of sweet potato and chews. Taeyong can’t tell by his face whether it’s to his taste. ‘What same things?’ he says, watching his face.

Jongin swallows. Twirls his fork on a potato, lightly marring its flesh but not crushing it. ‘Adventure. A purpose to your life. Doing something you alone can accomplish.’

Taeyong tries not to roll his eyes. How a man he met only once before and barely spoke to can know something only he can accomplish is beyond him. He sips at his hemp milk.

‘What do you think?’

‘You want to put me to hard work,’ says Taeyong flatly. ‘Or shape me into a worthy heir.’

‘I want you to be special,’ says Jongin, shaking his head, a gentle chide. ‘Not that you aren’t already. But you think you are cursed, when in reality you are gifted.’

Taeyong blinks. Drinks. Small, careful sips. He doesn’t know whether what’s zipping through him is excitement or fear.

‘You don’t have to overthink it,’ says Jongin, ‘you have plenty of time to think about it. Plenty of time to talk to me about anything that worries you, any questions you might have.’

‘What makes you think I’m special?’ Taeyong’s voice sounds rougher, despite the way the milk soothes his throat. 

Jongin’s gaze holds his in a cold embrace. ‘Because I’m like you.’

Taeyong’s fingers go brittle around his glass. He doesn’t know what he means. ‘Y-you were… an orphan too?’

Jongin is quiet. His fork twirls a potato into a mash.

‘Well?’

‘I think it’s better if we talk things out… slowly,’ says Jongin. ‘We have the time.’

‘Just tell me this, how are you like me? Were you an orphan? Is that why you want to adopt?’

‘I…’ Jongin sighs, shakes his head.

‘Why do you want to adopt? You don’t have a family?’

‘I have a family.’

‘Oh, really? Well I don’t. So you’re nothing like me.’

‘I have a family. I created them out of nothing. I sought them out, I gathered them, I bound them to me.’ Jongin doesn’t sound angry though. And Taeyong doesn’t want to push it, doesn’t want to ruin this, but he doesn’t know what’s going on. How can Jongin expect him to want this too when he doesn’t know what this  _ is _ ?

‘And you want to seek me, gather me into the fold, bind me to you, too, is that it?’ says Taeyong, trying to keep his tone light.

‘I do.’

“Sounds cult-ish.”

Jongin laughs, a high-pitched, hiccupping laugh that tugs at Taeyong’s diaphragm too. But Taeyong only twitches a smile.

“Oh, we’re not a religious fold,” assures Jongin. “We’re a saving-the-world kind of fold.”

‘Those don’t sound like they’d necessarily be two different things,’ says Taeyong, but Jongin shakes his head, amused.

‘What makes you think I’ll fit in with them?’ Taeyong switches tactics.

‘Because I’m like you, and I fit in with them.’ Jongin smiles, and Taeyong wills himself not to be wavered or distracted.

‘How am I like you?’

Jongin hums, still smiling. Teasing. Taeyong grits his teeth. 

‘I’m…’ Jongin’s smile changes, his lips trembling into a new shape. ‘Lonely. Different. Like you.’

Taeyong’s throat is parched in all of a moment. His glass is empty. No matter how different Jongin may be, Taeyong is the most different of all. No matter how different Jongin may be, he can’t be as different as Taeyong. No matter how lonely Jongin is, he can’t be desperate enough to want Taeyong, to want what Taeyong represents, the unknown, what can’t be known. 

No matter how adventurous Jongin is, he can’t be adventurous enough to choose not-quite-human Taeyong. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i love comments.  
> i have a [twitter](https://twitter.com/trashsshi). talk to me on there? ♡


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